Quotes from Leslie Stephen

Walking is the natural recreation for a man who desires not absolutely to suppress his intellect but to turn it out to play for a season. All great men of letters have therefore been enthusiastic walkers.

The wilderness provides an environment for a child's inner life to develop because it requires him to be constantly aware of his surroundings.

The division between faith and reason is a half-measure, till it is frankly admitted that faith has to do with fiction, and reason with fact.

The truth cannot be asserted without denouncing the falsehood.

Chance is a name for our ignorance.

Every man who says frankly and fully what he thinks is doing a public service.

Walking is the natural recreation for a man who desires not absolutely to suppress his intellect but to turn it out to play for a season.

I believe that the ascent of mountains forms an essential chapter in the complete duty of man, and that it is wrong to leave any district without setting foot on its highest peak.

If atheism is to be used to express the state of mind in which God is identified with the unknowable, and theology is pronounced to be a collection of meaningless words about unintelligible chimeras, then I have no doubt, and I think few people doubt.

No good story is quite true.

No poetry lives which reflects only the cheerful emotions. Our sweetest songs are those which tell of saddest thought. We can bring harmony out of melancholy; we cannot banish melancholy from the world. And the religious utterances, which are the highest form of poetry, are bound by the same law. There is a deep sadness in the world.

The Agnostic is one who asserts 'what no one denies' that there are limits to the sphere of human intelligence.

God is angry with man. Unless we believe and repent we shall all be damned. It is impossible, indeed, for its advocates even to say this without instantly contradicting themselves. Their doctrine frightens them. They explain in various ways that a great many people will be saved without believing, and that eternal damnation is not eternal nor damnation.

Lying may be necessary, but should always be painful.

If you wish at once to do nothing and be respectable nowadays, the best pretext is to be at work on some profound study.